The LORD’s hand waxed short

The LORD’s hand waxed short is a rhetorical expression of divine capability, used when Moses questions how the people can receive meat for a whole month. Its immediate context answers doubt with a challenge to witness what the LORD will do, making the phrase a hinge between human calculations and the announced fulfillment of divine power.

The phrase in its setting

The wording occurs after the people’s demand for meat and the LORD’s promise that they will eat it for a whole month. Moses points to the scale of the community—six hundred thousand men on foot—and asks whether even their flocks and herds, or all the fish of the sea, could suffice. His objection frames the provision as a problem of quantity and resources.

The LORD replies, “Is the LORD'S hand waxed short?” and immediately tells Moses that he will see whether the divine word comes to pass. The question does not invite an answer; it rebukes the assumption that the promise is limited by the resources Moses can imagine.

Narrative function and recurrence

The expression belongs to a broader pattern in which crisis and uncertainty are answered by declarations of divine action. When the Israelites refuse to heed Moses because of their distress and cruel bondage, the LORD promises liberation and an inheritance in the land given to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. At Sinai, the people assent to the covenant, and its terms are publicly read and ratified with blood. These episodes place divine promises within the larger movement from bondage toward collective obligation and land.

The phrase’s force is especially sharp because Moses has already witnessed deliverance and serves as mediator of the LORD’s words, yet here he measures the promised provision against the apparent scale of need. Elsewhere, Moses appeals to the ancestral promise when interceding for Israel after the golden calf, and asks that the LORD remain among a stiff-necked people as the covenant is renewed. Across these scenes, divine authority is presented not as an abstract attribute but as the ground of continued provision, judgment, and relationship with Israel.